Um it's been a century and no one thinks it isn't.
It's been looked down upon in China itself iirc as early as the 1600s since most people also thought it was stupid and inhumane, with only a bunch of ancient old farts clinging onto its idea of being "elite" and an outdated look on beauty.
The practice is thankfully pretty much banned everywhere now. Some people who are still alive today that were unfortunately forced into foot binding all regret it and wished they never did.
so the conclusion is that even though armor has been made with aesthetics in mind to emphasize cultural depictions of what is considered attractive (and to an extent integrated into the practical desing of the armor itself) there is little to no record of females wearing breastplates that put emphasis on their breast given that female rarely if ever wore armor nor took part of the war industry.
basically armor wasn't meant to protect you but instead save you from the chance of getting an injury on a sensitive area, isn't it?
Armor was basically, "Good luck hitting my vitals now jackass"
I'm no historian but the old cuirass based armors were made to resist impacts while the mid age designs were made to deflect.
I can't put myself in the shoes of a woman here but the casual dress from the 1600's looks more dangerous to use at the long run than dealing with the burden of wearing an armor. I heard in various documentals the corsets were often tight enough to difficult breathing and push the breasts to painful positions.
When you say mid age do you mean middle ages or renaissance? The later you go the more armour was about stopping projectiles, and even then that was truly "stop" than deflect. Same with arrows with earlier plate types, as arrows are likely to break on impact. chainmail+gambeson i guess are examples of armour that would really try to stop projectiles, and there are some accounts of warriors walking around with a lot of arrows in them. But for all intents and purposes in all these areas the deflective properties of the armours were more or less the same and it really was more about them being able to stop some of the impact.
As a curiosity check this curassiers, well, cuirass from mid 17th century. Note the two bullet impacts, usually these would ship from the armourer with 1 already to show that they're shotproof. I've worn an antique one of these and they are heavy. 2-3 cm thick usually and probably in the line with a MODERN plate carrier. The curious thing is the welt in the middle that suggests sloped surfaces for deflection, but if you look very carefully at the shotmarks you can see they have been made from an angle perpendicular to the armour surface, and the raised edges in neck, arm and bottom areas are actually a protection against deflection. A lead ball shattering will send shrapnel some ways and you obviously dont want that going up ion your face or wherever, so the raised areas should mitigate this.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0554/1957/products/a-mid-17th-century-english-multiplex-cavalry-breastplate-armor-european-limited-weapons-wfl-042-product-faganarms_270.png?v=1532960359
maybe i'm missing something but it seems kind of tough to directly compare giant codpieces with boobs. like if a codpiece was saying "i'm a big tough man and my dick weighs a ton", would boobs really have sent a message that was as conducive to stabbing dudes, even if they're not actually any more ridiculous than men wearing giant metal strapons?
honestly i wouldn't be surprised if that hypothetical surge of women knights started wearing huge codpieces too, just because it was an effective message back then and people thought it was cool. not that im into that hahahaha
If boobplate are killing you because someone could hit you with something blunt and it'll fold and choke you, then wouldn't the same happen to normal plate aswell, same goes for war pick striking through. Not arguing the viablity of boobplate but I don't think they actually make you more prone to get killed in these cases.
love boobs
the issue being that women would choose not to fight, and at the same would not be allowed to fight, it was a man thing to do.
females weren't even allowed to learn how to fight. that was a man thing™
Middle age and before. Putting more emphasis against short ranged, thrusting weapons.
With armors in general having more than one purpose I never took into consideration if quality was a concern, or if there was such thing like 'this wasn't supposed to be pierced this easy' or 'I don't trust my blacksmith.'
While I agree it's disgusting and shouldn't be practiced (at least not without a modern approach approved by physiotherapists and the like) but I don't think it's inhuman.
I'd say it's about as human as you can get. Hell, we invented it. We invented all the intrusive treatment and procedures in the pursuit of beauty and other goals.
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